1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to document processing, and to magnetic ink character recognition. The invention further relates to methods and systems for processing backwards documents in a document reader/imager.
2. Background Art
A typical document processing system includes a feeder and a separator in the document-feeding portion of the system, and a series of roller pairs or belts in the document-transporting portion of the system. In the feeding portion of the system, the feeder acts with the separator to feed documents singly, in order, from a stack. In the transporting portion of the system, the roller pairs and/or belts convey the documents, one at a time, past other processing devices such as readers, printers, and sorters that perform operations on the documents. The feeder is typically a feed wheel, but may take other forms. The separator may be a wheel, but also may take other forms such as a belt. Further, the components in the transporting portion of the system may take a variety of forms.
In addition to large document processing systems that handle stacks of documents, smaller systems also exist. These smaller document processing systems may handle smaller stacks of documents, or may even handle single documents, fed one at a time.
Banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions use document processing systems to regularly process checks, deposit slips, and other types of bank documents in order to execute financial transactions efficiently. Document processing systems have therefore become quite prevalent in the industry. Typically, information is printed on these documents in magnetic ink which can be read both by the human eye and a computer. This form of printing is read by a process called magnetic ink character recognition (MICR). As part of the recognition process, a MICR magnetic read head is used to read the information printed on the document.
Conventional approaches to MICR reading and recognition generally involve determining peak position information for a waveform generated by a single gap magnetic read head. This peak information typically includes information regarding the amount of time between the peaks of each character. Knowledge of the velocity of the document (and thus, the velocity of the characters which are printed on the document) allows this time information to be converted into distance information, which can be compared to the MICR character peak profiles as contained in the ANSI X9.27-2000 “Print and Test Specifications for Magnetic Ink Printing (MICR)” as promulgated by the American National Standards Institute. Based on the design of the standard E-13B character set, in order that a MICR reader reliably read with a high correct character read rate and with a very low substitution rate, the document velocity must be precisely known during reading or otherwise be speed-controlled so that it does not vary.
These conventional approaches are acceptable when the velocity of the document is either known or can be controlled. In fact, conventional approaches to MICR typically involve rather complex schemes for controlling the velocity of the document or attempting to measure its velocity at different times as the document moves past the MICR read head. There has also been an approach to MICR reading and recognition that utilizes a dual gap read head to eliminate the need for precise knowledge or control of the document velocity.
In existing document processors, throughput is measured by the number of items processed in a given time. When a stack of documents is loaded into the hopper at the document feeder, it is possible that one or more documents may be oriented backwards. In the case of a document that contains a MICR code line along the bottom edge of the document, inserting the document backwards into the document processor will generate an error in a document processing application where magnetic ink character recognition is used. As a result, the document will have to be processed manually. The MICR code line will have to be entered by hand by referencing the physical document or an image of the document. This manual processing is time consuming and degrades throughput. An improvement in overall throughput can be achieved by reducing the time that the operator spends recovering from a backwards inserted document; however, current recovery procedures require manual processing, which is costly in time and in manpower.